(no subject)

[bardic_lady]

I'm taking a poll, who would you say is the most famous damsel in distress in all of literature/media? The apex of needs a man to come and rescue her?

Suggested so far:
Snow White
Rapunzel
Sleeping Beauty
Maid Marian
Peach (Mario)
Ilsa (Casablanca)
Lois Lane
Eurydice
Aurora
Bella (Twilight :( )

(Hint: I'm looking for the antithesis of Starbuck in "You Can't Go Home Again")

Comments

[spartacusjones.livejournal.com]

#1

[dramaturgca.livejournal.com]

I'm looking for new suggestions too.

[spartacusjones.livejournal.com]

Actually (upon refresh) Peach from Mario (before they made her all independent later on) is a really good choice.

Eurydice. That's my vote.

[phoenixothon.livejournal.com]

Aurora

unless to literal of a resprentation for you

Eos (ē'os) [key], in Greek religion and mythology, goddess of dawn; daughter of the Titans Hyperion and Theia. Every morning she arose early and preceded her brother Helios into the heavens. Her husband was Astraeus, by whom she bore the stars and the winds—Notus, the south wind; Boreas, the north wind; and Zephyr or Zephyrus, the west wind. Because Eos made love to Ares, Aphrodite cursed her with an insatiable desire for young men. Among her many lovers were Tithonus and Cephalus. The Romans called her Aurora.

[e-mily.livejournal.com]

I'd say Snow White, for the longevity.

Peach is a close second. Hardly anybody has any idea of what she's for, except providing the KoopaKids.

[gypsy-sally.livejournal.com]

Sadly, whatshername from the Twilight books is pretty high on the fame meter these days. Also, completely incapable of happiness or apparently even survival without the approval/presence of her obsession boyfriend.

[dramaturgca.livejournal.com]

Ooh. Very very good point. (Her name is Bella. Which is apparently going to be the most used girl's name in the US in about 5 years.)

[aisforamy]

Scarlett O'Hara? That's the first one that popped into my head.

[viridian.livejournal.com]

Take Bella off there right now. :P

I think Rapunzel. Or Sleeping Beauty, since she was, um, ASLEEP, until rescued. It's hard to have agency if you're unconscious.

[dramaturgca.livejournal.com]

In what way is Bella NOT a damsel in distress? Unless you're discussing that she probably doesn't qualify for damselhood. ;p

[viridian.livejournal.com]

idk, she isn't. I'm not up to discussing it fully, but she isn't, IMO.

[ashen_key]

I'd go for a tie between Snow White and Sleeping Beauty, actually.

[muffin-song.livejournal.com]

Hmm...interesting question! I love Ilsa, but she has a lot more backbone than some of the other characters. I would say Snow White/Sleeping Beauty/Rapunzel for the longetivity. Although Lois Lane fits well because she's also a modern figure...

[dybji.livejournal.com]

(Er, randomly reading Zuka Community f'list and stopping by what ho! If that's okay.)

I'd vote Sleeping Beauty. She gets herself into a mess and contractually cannot get herself back out of it unless/until a man comes and saves her.

Tbh most of these ladies I hate to see labeled as helpless/"damsels in distress." Interestingly most of them are canonically kick-ass if ever you take them out of their towers and biers. (I'd argue Rapunzel doesn't belong on the list at all, tower or no tower, because dude, lady lives on her own in a forest after being raised in a stone room all supplies taken care of while taking care of babies. Plus, the prince isn't the one who gets her out of the tower in the first place. ;) All she needed was for Mommy to let birdie out of the nest; the man was entirely incidental. ;) )

Marion does some ninja weaving, also, when she's trapped, and gets her own distress signal out past ridiculously tight security, plus she also fights and does pretty well in the woods in company with a bunch of men in tights, so I'd want to give her some credit too. Even Peach can fight as well as Mario and company if ever she gets out of that castle. And Eurydice – well, Eurydice is dead, so in a way doesn't need/didn't ask for/for all we know didn't even want saving; Theseus is probably the most canonically damselled-in-distress as far as being trapped in Hades goes.

[dramaturgca.livejournal.com]

Welcome! The more the merrier, especially when I'm trying to write a paper and looking for outside opinions ;)

Sleeping Beauty, to me, is the most damsel-y.

Snow White does manage to get herself out of deadly peril A, it's deadly peril B that requires assistance. Rapunzel... is questionable. I don't consider Marian particularly damselish, but it was suggested by someone, so I put it on the list. Peach strikes me as basically a damsel because it takes a rescue to get her out of the castle. Eurydice is dead of running from a rapist and no, she didn't ask to be rescued from Hades, but she really doesn't get any agency one way or the other in the story.

My biggest qualm about using Sleeping Beauty though is that canonically she's a rape victim, and I'm leery about adding another stigma.

[dybji.livejournal.com]

:D Thank you!

Ooh, I hadn't considered that. D: Er ... maybe Lois Lane?

(I'm adamant about Rapunzel, though. :P She and Cinderella/Catskin get a really unfair rap in pop culture when actually they were ridiculously resourceful clever sturdy girls. ... Well, in my head, anyway. It sometimes a weird head.)

[dramaturgca.livejournal.com]

I absolutely agree about Cinderella. Rapunzel, it seems to me, had possibilities for escape that she didn't take. If she chose to stay, that's fine, but then her situation is very different.

I suspect I'm going to end up using Sleeping Beauty as my example, but probably tie it directly to the Disney where rape isn't an issue.

[dybji.livejournal.com]

But what if we do a genderswap on Rapunzel? Youth raised in isolation in a tower, meets Girl and has Sexual Awakening, subsequently meets parents' terms for release/escapes into real world and has coming of age battle with the wilderness before being reunited with Girl, cures Girl's blindness, and they live happily ever after. Even if Youth isn't noble and Girl is, it still works within the coming of age framework as it makes Youth clever and plucky and boy who earns princehood in coming of age, and Girl being unable to save Boy!Rapunzel and then being blinded by Witch and then needing Boy!Rapunzel to cure her blindness, not to mention being unable to find her way home by herself until her blindness is cured ... come on come on. Boy!Rapunzel would be epic admittedly-probably-wearing-tights coming-of-age hero and girl!prince would be incompetent damsel.

[dramaturgca.livejournal.com]

Oh, I never meant to imply that I thought the prince was competent! He's possibly the most flat out inept of the fairy tale princes. Except maybe Vassilisa's prince in the Baba Yaga tales.

And I'm aaaaaaall about genderswap. (See example ;) )

[dybji.livejournal.com]

Genderswap is very very awesome indeed. :D

(Okay, we don't have to agree on Rapunzel. :P She is totally still my hero, though.)

[dramaturgca.livejournal.com]

Can we be friendly even if we have different fairy tale heroes? ;)

[dybji.livejournal.com]

What a boring place the world would be if we all had the same fairy tale heroes!

Besides, fairy tale lovers should band together. ;)

[littlelotte.livejournal.com]

Rapunzel. Until she was rescued she was helpless from the get-go. Peach is a reasonable option, too, but Rapunzel is more universal, I think. The longevity helps.

Bella was reasonable until she started dating Edward.

You have a couple who often find themselves in the situation of needing somebody to come save them, but I don't consider that the apex of...just bad luck/targeted.

Eurydice didn't need Orpheus to come save her, he just didn't want to live without her. I love Rilke's Orpheus and Eurydike...perfect example of that.

[dogwoodblossom.livejournal.com]

Um, really she doesn't quite fit your topic (also not familiar with the episode you reference so) but at the prompt I instantly thought Juliet. On a balcony. "Romeo, Romeo, Wherefore art thou Romeo?"

Also I'm not happy with all these people talkin' smack about Lois Lane. I mean, sure, 1960's Lois did stuff like throw herself out of buildings to get Superman to propose to her, but old school and modern Lois is a total badass (except not in SV *shudders*).

There's one of the old Fleischer Brothers Superman cartoons where she infiltrates a den of mobsters and then has to escpae by climbing through a high rise construction project. There's a another where she steals Clark's press pass so that he's stuck behind a checkpoint while she drives to the summit of an erupting volcano so that she'll have an exclusive on the story. She does these things not in a ditsy stupid way (and certainly not expecting the inevitable rescue) but in confident, assertive, journalist who will go to any length to get the story way.